Rodolfo is really hung up on this price issue... Obviously, if I want to experience video standards, I don’t have any choice but to pay about $400 to make that happen. This is a lifestyle choice and nothing more.
On one hand Rodolfo goes out of his way to assure us he supports the concept of professional calibration yet on the other hand he goes out of his way to create linear arguments of relative cost to convince us otherwise, suggesting you might be satisfied with your own adjustments. Yet making your own adjustments has nothing to do with your desire to experience an image based on video standards that requires instrumentation to achieve. Clarity appears to have been lost due to his personal agenda.
The cost relation I always do is not about income or value to a person, but is about the relative cost of the calibration compared to the price of the set. I was clear on my note when I extended that relation to cars, house items, etc.
In my view, it’s your lifestyle, your money and I think you, the reader, should do what ever makes you happy. Rodolfo acts as if the reader is unable to observe the obvious relationship of cost and appears to be on a mission to save you from your unwitting self before you drop $400 to calibrate a display that is unworthy, according to his personal agenda.
For years, the common marketing template hype has been that if you spend gobs of money it is wise to calibrate simply due to relative cost (along with an assortment of other expensive items that appear inexpensive based on relative cost). Rodolfo uses this same argument to suggest calibration does not make sense for him in the current market because the price of a display has dropped so dramatically. Under such pretenses, one reasonable conclusion is that if you want to calibrate you should spend even more money on more expensive display simply to justify the service even though the end result won’t be any better (it could be worse). How is that common sense? Under such pretenses one could conclude that even if an inexpensive display can be calibrated well you are wasting your money to do so simply because the display wasn’t expensive enough. How is that common sense? Because a 50" plasma display was $4000 years ago professional calibration made sense, but now because that same display is only $900 there is no reason to professionally calibrate? How is that common sense? None of this cost analysis even bares a direct relationship with achieving video standards in your home on your display.
Pragmatic common sense would suggest that the only reason to calibrate is because you have a desire to experience an image based on video standards. Fulfilling that desire is not directly related to the cost of the display but rather the ability to calibrate the display. Price and brand alone doesn’t directly determine how well any given display calibrates or performs and plenty have been hood winked into believing such anecdotal conclusions!
If you have no interest in calibration why should you spend the first dollar to have the service performed? Pragmatic common sense suggests that is a waste of money, regardless of the marketing approaches, such as the ever useful cost relationship, that may be used to get calibration money out of you. I repeat, merely creating a perception of quality imaging is easily achieved by an end user or installer by adjusting the controls to their satisfaction; you don’t need a calibration disc or calibration to video standards to create that perception! Yet spending money on a service you don’t really understand, want, appreciate or care about is common sense simply because your stuff costs more?
The only thing that has changed between now and years ago is that the overall price of acquiring this desire, display plus calibration, has fallen only because the price of the display has fallen. All that matters in the end is that the display can be properly calibrated, regardless of price. In today’s market, you can get video standards in your home for way less than you could years ago for the same size display. That’s great news if you desire video standards!
You could just as easily make your image worse playing with a calibration DVD.
Adding to that... And it’s likely the end user won’t change the controls due to the false sense of security that naturally comes with performing this process, another common attribute of self calibration I regularly witness; I did what the disc said so this must be what correct looks like. If you don’t know how this stuff works then you need somebody who does because a calibration disc can improve your picture for little money when used properly. A professional calibrator can do that and more, taking you to the next level providing accurate color and gamma.